Associate Director, Strategy

Manages day-to-day media strategy and planning for a high-profile, fast-paced account, translating the VP’s strategic vision into clear plans, briefs, and actions. Leads the team responsible for developing and stewarding media plans, coordinating cross-functional partners to ensure the strategy is implemented consistently, accurately, and on time. Reports to the VP, Media Strategy.

Manages day-to-day media strategy and planning for a high-profile, fast-paced account, translating the VP’s strategic vision into clear plans, briefs, and actions. Leads the team responsible for developing and stewarding media plans, coordinating cross-functional partners to ensure the strategy is implemented consistently, accurately, and on time. Reports to the VP, Media Strategy.

• Translate the VP’s strategic vision into actionable media plans across audience, channel, commerce, creative, content, programmatic, and measurement.
• Manage all day-to-day aspects of annual, go-to-market, tactical, and innovation planning across multiple campaigns, from brief through approval, launch, and stewardship.
• Develop planning objectives and recommendations that align with and elevate client marketing and business goals.
• Turn client briefs, consumer insights, and performance data into clear audience, channel, investment, and learning recommendations.
• Build client-ready recommendations and presentations, incorporating input from senior strategy leadership and partner teams.

• Act as the day-to-day cross-team lead across Strategy, Investment, Content, Commerce, Analytics, Operations, Finance, and the brand IAT to implement the approved strategy across the media ecosystem.
• Own timelines, trackers, briefs, pre-reads, and shared resources, following up on dependencies and deadlines.
• Partner with Analytics to implement measurement plans and apply learnings to ongoing work.
• Follow established procedures and complete work in a detailed, accurate manner.
• Keep clients and internal teams aligned on status, decisions, risks, approvals, and next steps.

• Supervise, train, and develop Planner by setting priorities, managing workloads, delegating responsibilities, reviewing deliverables, and checking work for accuracy.
• Provide performance feedback, mentor direct reports, support career development, and make recommendations to management.
• Coordinate resources across concurrent campaigns and work streams, escalating capacity concerns and recommending workflow adjustments.
• Maintain clear working rhythms, roles, and communication standards that support consistent execution.
• Serve as the day-to-day point of contact for strategic and operational questions, escalating major decisions when needed.
• Identify gaps in process, data, ownership, or communication and implement practical solutions.
• Lead by example and provide hands‑on support throughout planning and activation.
• Communicate effectively across levels, adopt new skills and tools with an emphasis on AI, and stay current on cross‑channel media, technology, trends, challenges, and competition.
• Perform other duties and responsibilities that management may deem necessary from time to time.

Number of Direct Reports: 1

Number of Indirect Reports: up to 5

Internal:
Works day to day with Strategy, Commerce, Social, Video, Analytics, Operations, Finance, Operations to align deliverables, timelines, responsibilities, and implementation.

External:
Manages day-to-day communication with client stakeholders, media and technology partners, vendors, and partner agencies on deliverables, approvals,…